


all things serve the source

by jonphaedrus



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Gen, Parallel Universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-28 03:20:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20057167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: “Please, Mother.”





	all things serve the source

**Author's Note:**

> all things work in harmony with the greater tides of fate. all events serve a greater purpose, even if we can’t understand what that purpose might be. all things serve the beam.
> 
> (title & notes taken from stephen king's dark tower)

_Ends_ are unremarkable. They are not accompanied by anything of import except for the cessation of that which came before.

_Ends _are slow and inexorable, darkness creeping in further in every shadow as the land drained of aether. The end comes between two breaths, in the space where the air is held until his heartbeat grows thin and painful in his hollow chest.

The end of the world comes and finds Alphinaud Leveilleur abandoned by Unukalhai, their final hope, as the last watchman to stand above a dying world. _The Thirteenth_, the Paragons called it. Unlucky black thirteen, now devoid even of that color and made into the darkness of nothing, of the Void, taking it away, one ilm further in every breath.

He has chosen to remain here, alive. To be the final watch and warrant. This last the Void will ever be something that once held light and life.

In that yawning Nothing, Alphinaud sits beside his sister’s body, cold and still and dead, and _prays_. They are but a reflection, a Shard of her grace, but surely even redheaded stepchildren are still beloved, are they not?

She answers.

She answers that last living, breathing of her children in the first lost shard, a rejoining that cannot complete, a failed experiment. Hydaelyn takes Alphinaud to her, to the place where the veil is thinnest, and her voice in his mind, in his ears, in his heart, is _deafening._

He does not ask of her the boon to undo that which has been done. If the Paragons cannot, neither can see—that which has now been made cannot, can never, be unmade. The Void is coming for the Thirteenth, and whatever opportunity they’d had, however briefly, to stop it, is long past. The Warrior of Light failed, born too young and too late. The Paragons chased too much that fervor, overstayed their welcome and burned the candle beyond the base of the wick until only melted wax remained. Alphinaud could not hold together the Scions.

A lesson learned, certainly.

Embraced in Hydaelyn’s light (in that burning, heaving flood, so unlike the remains that are now the carcass of the Thirteenth) Alphinaud listens as she asks _what would thou wilt, my child?_

“Let me fix it, Mother. I know I can fix it. Not here, not now.” No, the Void will take with it all he has ever known. His world. His family. His friends. Only Unukalhai and his companions, rescued for some future use, will survive beyond the bones of this sepulcher, lungs full of aether and his body singing in the Source. 

“If I have the chance.”

Hydaelyn’s decision is gentle against him, a warmth that places in his hand a single crystal, that perhaps when she fractures it from herself is a shard of Light, of Herself, of Her Body, from the Source. But it remains bright only as long as he stands in Her Grace, and with it, comes a haunting knowledge. That which he must do.

There is only one way between Reflections, sundered as they are. They are side-by-side, but you could run a thousand thousand malms and never reach the next. No—the corporeal realm does not touch.

The Aetherial Realm does.

Alphinaud holds the crystal in his hand as Hydaelyn’s light drains from it completely, the Void starving, leeching the last of the aether, chasing the Mother it would suck dry to a husk would that it could. It turns dark, to Darkness, just like the world that was once his home, and he feels it dig into his palm as he takes the sword from his sister’s cold, still hands. Her eyes stare unseeing, nothing left to reflect.

There are thirteen other worlds. Thirteen other lives Alisae will live. Thirteen other halves of himself who will not die in his arms, stricken when her gasping lungs can no longer suck in aether in the emptiness of Nothing. There are thirteen other Scions: other Louisoix Leveilleurs, who perhaps will not sunder Eorzea as Phoenix in other lives. Thirteen Minfilias, who will not throw themselves atop Moenbryda. Thirteen Ydas, who mayhaps might live their lives side by side rather than atop the grave of her buried younger sister.

So many worlds, waiting, just beyond the sharpened end of a sword.

What is death, next to Nothing? There is no Aetherial Plane in the Void; there is nothing awaiting Alphinaud but an eternity of _dark_ and _empty_, of _hunger_ and _thirst_ and endless, pounding, pulsing, _haunting_ howling, for when the aether is run dry surely they will turn upon one another one at a time. Again. Again. Again.

The last words spoken in the Void before it becomes devoid of all but starving, hungry creations, twisted, are: “_Please, Mother_.”

This is the thing about Reflections: when looking in a mirror or a pool of water, that which you see is never quite true to life. It looks it—the shape of the nose, the sweep of the hair, the secrets of the smile—but a reflection is simply that. The picture, not the life. The image, the mirror, not the breath.

Alphinaud finds death hurts far less than Nothing, and that Twelve is waiting for him, not-his and for-him all at once.

It is Hydaelyn. But it is not _his_ Hydaelyn. It is not the Void which lurks now at the end of all things, waiting, soul-hungry and unsated Black Thirteen. It is simply another, one rosier in hue, one softer in its shades, one gentler in its manner, but one doomed nonetheless. As long as the Paragons walk, as long as the Blessing of Light endure and Zodiark elude, they will fall.

One by one, into nothing.

There are things he will learn later that wait for him in Twelve. Terms like _time dilation_ and _touchstones_ as to the way that travel between Reflections work, but he arrives there, at the Twelfth, and finds the world dying. He does not yet know why, or how, but surely—surely there cannot be an Ardor already, so close to the last one?

His own Warrior of Light was born too late: blessed by Light but too young to yet take that naked blade in hand.

The Twelfth’s Warrior of Light was born too early: blessed by Light but died so long ago that there is no chance her corpse will rise again, animated by some desperate desire to fight back the encroaching dark. For that is what happens—the Paragons arrive, and their way is practically an open door.

There’s no need to draw the Twelfth to its end with talent and skill when there is no Warrior of Light to fight back.

Alphinaud is nineteen years old when he dies (for the first time for the last time) and awakens in the Twelfth, finds a corpse waiting for him instead of a child, and sets his foot upon the first paving stone that lines his road of good intentions.

_If_, he reasons, _there is no Warrior of Light, then I shall carry that burden_.

He is not given, adept, at combat, but Alphinaud learns, as he must. The world that this Eorzea is is far ahead of his own; technology so complex that it leaves him struggling to learn language and skills even as he draws aether from the Shard. But he learns, as he must, until he can fight down everything in his way. Hydaelyn’s Echo, her gift that robes him in the gilt of her grace and light, guards him from Primals and Paragons alike.

How easy it seems to save the world!

The Twelfth fails, for he has not enough time, not enough resources, to undo and undo and undo, and Alphinaud is an old man when the Shard cracks and fractures beneath the might of a thousand thousand straws upon the dhalmel’s back, buckling at last.

The first Umbral Calamity comes in wind upon the Source, and upon the Twelfth, Alphinaud takes up a knife in one hand, a stone in the other, holds his hands outstretched before hm.

And prays.

“_Please, Mother._”

**Author's Note:**

> noahfronsenburg.carrd.co


End file.
